Monday, February 19, 2018

Buster Posey is one of the most accomplished catchers in baseball history. At 30 years old, he already has a Hall of Fame resume.

In eight full seasons with the Giants, Posey has won National League Rookie of the Year, NL MVP, four Silver Slugger awards, a Gold Glove, and is a five-time All-Star. While he still has plenty of years left, Posey has naturally thought a bit about what he would like to do once his playing days are done.

But, politics? Well, kind of.

(As always, views expressed in the article lede and comments are the views of the individual commenters and the submitter of the article and do not represent the views of Baseball Think Factory or its owner.)

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More news coming out about the Parkland shooting. Truns out that when the City of Coral Springs police arrived on the scene, there were 3 Broward sheriff deputies outside the school crouched behind their vehicles, not counting the SRO. The Coral Springs cops ran inside the school while the deputies remained outside under cover.

Sodomy laws were on the books pre-Lawrence (and maybe even still are as unenforceable artifacts that states haven't bothered to clear away; I don't know). If you object to that analogy, then 18 USC 793(f) was on the books in the Hillary case, WITH a prong for gross negligence, but Comey decided that only a prosecution under the intent prong would suffice.

So it can't be "this law is on the books, nyah nyah" as a necessarily appropriate basis for a VALID targeting of someone by government. No Reasonable Prosecutor, remember?

Um, no. Really unclear on the attempted gotcha here. Nobody, least of all me, suggested that the FBI shouldn't investigate Hillary, including interviewing her. And if she had lied in the interview, which she apparently did not, then she would've been prosecuted. And just as there's nothing wrong with interviewing Hillary, there wasn't anything wrong with interviewing Flynn. ("Targeting" is just you trying to make an interview sound more sinister.)

You're going against principles you've preached for decades on the internet.

Politicians should all be locked up?

If you're going to do that, what is the purpose of your posts? If you can't even convince yourself of your own arguments -- if your principles fall the moment they're tested by someone like Trump -- what good are they?

Sure, Mr. Fake Libertarian Who Supports The Least Libertarian President Ever, I'm worried about whether you approve of my consistency.

Sure. But this is sort of my point. Unless you want to go the libertarian-fantasy route of making sure that everybody, everywhere, is armed to the teeth (which it occurs to me you probably do :( , all targets can be defined as "soft" – even places where extremely well-trained and heavily-armed personnel can be "scrambled" quickly.

We're kind of already through the looking glass, but once we reach the point of a US Army base being denoted a "soft target," we're through the looking glass, through a core meltdown to China, and blasting through to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite with a perpetual IV of LSD rampaging through our veins.

It's sort of laughable: even when a whole SWAT team shows up -- such as to the Orlando nighclub or to the Vegas shooting -- they take their sweet time being cowards assessing the situation before taking any sort of action. What this usually does NOT involve is just blindly rushing in, until they're sure that the scene is "secure" [read: the loon has run out of bullets or has killed himself].

So it's sort of rich to be banging on this one lone deputy here. But on the internet the balls to criticize someone who suddenly learned that he wasn't up to the AR-15 fight are apparently not in short supply.

Not surprising that you're really unclear on it, but it's obvious. If you're interpreting the statute to require intent, and you don't think there's any chance Hillary acted with intent then, no -- you don't interview her and then say NYAH, NYAH, statute's on the books.

Demanding, or even requesting, an interview under those circumstances is an abuse of power. You remember the concept of abuse of power, right? Or has your TDS completely washed it from your memory?

And it is not entirely clear that arming absolutely everybody to the teeth will deter anybody who's at once homicidal and suicidal. The Las Vegas shooter was completely ready to die, and totally undeterred by the possibility that some of his victims might be carrying concealed handguns.

Well, he didn't walk up to the crowd and start shooting, did he? No. We don't know why (since we don't know much of anything about the situation), but certainly the possibility that some of the people might have been armed and fought back could have deterred him from choosing that approach, and instead cause him to snipe from a distance.

In one of the few correct things Ray has said in the last two years, he pointed out that even those who are suicidal can be deterred; they may not want to outlive the incident, but they want to live long enough to complete their objective. Nothing is lamer than a suicide attacker who is shot before he actually hurts anyone else.

One might imagine the training is less rigorous for sworn officers on desk, clerical or administrative duty. In no way have I ever been told this by friends who are such officers.

The all caps comment refers to what - my tongue in cheek "instuctions" at the end of the post or the description of LEO basic training in our state? I suspect the first, based on your next line.

I was only making reference to what my friends in law enforcement tell me here. I'm trying not to write anything that will ever get anyone in trouble. But from my understanding, some police officers and deputies are highly trained. Most are not and rely on a general respect for "the law" to exercise power over a situation.

It's college acceptance season, but students can't just treat the second half of senior year as a free space to start punching teachers and robbing gas stations. Colleges insist that students alert them about any disciplinary action, suspensions, arrests, etc. that might occur in between January and September, so that they can rescind an applicant's acceptance if necessary.

For any legal or scholastic repercussions arising from the upcoming Parkland school gun protests and walkouts, Dartmouth, Amherst, MIT, Tufts, Northeastern, BU, and numerous other schools have officially told applicants, "Do whatever you need to do, it's cool."

This cliché is something that you and (IIRC) SBB have invented for this thread. If Cruz were firing out the window or doors of the school at the entrance to the building, and we suggested that Peterson should have tried to get in anyway, then that retort might have been valid. But Cruz was inside the school shooting at students and teachers. There was no gunfire whatsoever directed at Peterson.

By the way, in case anyone missed it, the Washington Redskins' trademark was reinstated on January 18th, which was a fait accompli once the USSC decided the Slants case:

Fourth Circuit Reinstates Redskins Trademark

Sanford Hausler – January 22, 2018

The Fourth Circuit has reinstated the Washington Redskins’ trademark, which had been canceled by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board as offensive to American Indians, which decision had been affirmed by the district court. The Fourth Circuit’s decision was made without oral argument, based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), in which the Court held that a music group called the Slants was entitled to register their trademark even though it was found by the Patent and Trademark Office to be offensive.

It begins to pierce the idea that the Manafort and Gates thing have nothing to do with the Russia problem. Because what's absolutely playing in this indictment is that Manafort and Gates were deep in hock to Putin's ally in Ukraine. They were in a desperate financial situation. And in the middle of a financial situation, Paul Manafort decides to take a volunteer job as head of the Trump campaign. And so, [half laugh] the question is, "Who suggested that a person, who was so desperate they were defrauding banks, should become a volunteer in the Trump campaign? What was all this about?" I think we're closer and closer to learning that the top two team members in Trump Tower were on Putin's puppets payroll. And I think that is a very significant development as this thing unfolds.

(CNN)When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff's deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.

With direction from the Broward deputies who were outside, Coral Springs police soon entered the building where the shooter was. New Broward County Sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene, and two of those deputies and an officer from Sunrise, Florida, joined the Coral Springs police as they went into the building.

Some Coral Springs police were stunned and upset that the four original Broward County Sheriff's deputies who were first on the scene did not appear to join them as they entered the school, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. It's unclear whether the shooter was still in the building when they arrived.

I imagine it'll look something like the military style Gulf War parade that the city of New York didn't have because we Don't Do military style parades in America how dare Dictator Trump suggest that we have one had 25 years ago.

The post gulf war hysteria was way over the top but I get it. Our last two major conflicts weren't great and we had to suffer through the 70's. So I get that we kind of cut loose and went a little overboard because we liberated Kuwait. But this parade doesn't even have a fig leaf of mission accomplished. This parade is happening because the president has a hard on for pageantry and being the big shot in the center of the room.

"[W]e hold our students to a high standard and give them a wide berth. It would be at best quixotic, and at worst hypocritical, if we treated our applicants differently, penalizing them for engaging in responsible, responsive citizenship as the students at Stoneman Douglas and elsewhere have done."

New charges for Manafort following today's Gates guilty plea. The indictment says Manafort hid the fact that he paid several Europeans 2 million euros from offshore accounts for them to secretly lobby for Manafort's Ukrainian interests in astroturf fashion, without seeming to have any ties to Ukraine.

No, what I did was accurate describe the outcome that would follow someone undertaking the course of action you advocated. You may be unfathomably naive or deluded about what sending a marginally trained gunman into a crowded building with everyone panicking to shoot one or more unidentified people, but there's no reason for the rest of us to take total leave of our senses.

No, you're lying yet again. The best practices after Columbine don't, as you falsely claimed, have law enforcement officers "fire into crowds of people while under fire, hoping to hit the right one(s)". That's just making stuff up, and stupid stuff at that. Columbine changed the law enforcement response because treating an active shooter situation like a hostage situation had disastrous consequences:

"It changed everything," said James Gagliano, a retired member of the FBI's elite hostage rescue team. "Prior to Columbine, nobody understood what the term 'active shooter' meant."
. . .
"Nowadays, what we do is go to the sound of the guns," Gagliano said. "You get one, two, three, four people together. We're trained. We use particular formations." Gagliano called it a "heterogeneous group" of first responders that could include local, state and federal agencies. "You're going to the sound of the guns," he said. "The No. 1 goal is to interdict the shooter or shooters. In the old days, you took land. You went in. You clear the room. Then you slowly and methodically move to clear the next room. In this instance ... get to the shooter as quickly as possible and that's what they clearly did here."

The tactic, known in law enforcement circles as rapid deployment involving the first officer at the scene, began in earnest after the Columbine shooting.

The problem is that neither the SRO nor the other 2 Sheriffs Deputies that arrived quickly implemented the rapid deployment protocol. I'm at a loss as to why some here contend that was the appropriate response when the law enforcement professionals seem to unanimously disagree.

New charges for Manafort following today's Gates guilty plea. The indictment says Manafort hid the fact that he paid several Europeans 2 million euros from offshore accounts for them to secretly lobby for Manafort's Ukrainian interests in astroturf fashion, without seeming to have any ties to Ukraine.

So a guy tens of millions of dollars in debt to Putin decides to work for Trump for "free"? I'm no Robert Mueller but that surely should raise some red flags, no?

Gates is apparently cooperating 100% -- and is still looking at 6 years. Manafort has been charged with "conspiracy against the US" (and Gates has already plead guilty to the same)-- can one of our attorney friends elucidate the precedent here wrt to charges of "conspiracy against the US?" Today's charges seem very serious and closer to "collusion" than something like "lying to the FBI."

Also it seems now that #releasethememo and the "secret society" texts seem to have completely fallen off the radar ( maybe because they were always media stunts and little more) Fox and their ilk is pivoting to "the Democrats on Mueller's team" and JW is talking about Yates.

It is to laugh.

edit: lol -- FoxNews.com has the Manafort and Gates news "below the fold" -- buried right under a story about Trudeau's wardrobe choices in India.

and it was a nothingburger. a political stunt that has absolutely no bearing on Mueller's work. That was the point I was making. The GOP is desperate but they aren't stupid. They "took the temp" wrt to the memo and it turned out most people jsut ####### yawned. I do give them credit for hyping it up "the decision" style. I guess they won that week's news cycle.

Also it seems now that #releasethememo and the "secret society" texts seem to have completely fallen off the radar ( maybe because they were always media stunts and little more) Fox and their ilk is pivoting to "the Democrats on Mueller's team" and JW is talking about Yates.

It is to laugh.

As Ray points out, sleeping beauty, the Nunes memo was released. As was the one from Grassley. (Next, we await the IG report.) Meanwhile, Schiff no longer seems all that interested in his own damn document.

IIRC, Manafort was brought into the campaign because it was believed his connections would help ensure that Trump didn't get derailed at the RNC.

"Mr. Trump, I'll work for free, because a whole bunch of Republicans will throw money at me to influence you."

That's the friendly take on the conversation between the two. That's the problem here for Trump. If he wasn't paying Manafort, then Trump should have understood that Manafort was acting as somebody else's agent. Instead Trump probably thought he was getting a great deal, a 67-year-old intern.

Manafort played Trump as a chump. And now Trump has to pay Kevin Downing, because Manafort's rugs aren't covering his legal bills.

As Ray points out, sleeping beauty, the Nunes memo was released. As was the one from Grassley. (Next, we await the IG report.) Meanwhile, Schiff no longer seems all that interested in his own damn document.

That's the hilarious part of it. While Rip Van Wall was sleeping through the release of the Nunes memo it was the Schiff memo that people suddenly lost interest in.

Trump... he never fails to fail riling up the left. In response to a mass gun tragedy which the left always uses to call for fewer guns Trump goes hard in the other direction and proposes... arming teachers.

IIRC, Manafort was brought into the campaign because it was believed his connections would help ensure that Trump didn't get derailed at the RNC.

I see the Peanut Gallery (#1747) has already taken issue with JE's statement, but Manafort's background was in the delegate selection process, credentials, convention rules, and floor fights. Those who followed this thread, or any news, in Spring 2016, will remember that the fabled Brokered Convention was all that stood in Trump's path after the Florida Primary, making Manafort a potentially useful hire. When the Brokered Convention, yet again, failed to materialize, and Corey Lewandowski wore out his welcome in late June, Manafort was positioned to become Campaign Manager, but only lasted about 2 months before revelations about his ties with the former Ukrainian government, and his lack of candor, led to his dismissal.

That's the hilarious part of it. While Rip Van Wall was sleeping through the release of the Nunes memo it was the Schiff memo that people suddenly lost interest in.

Because the Nunes memo was so feeble and forgettable that there was no longer any need to rebut it? Because Nunes' megahyped narrative died such a brutal crib death that a competing narrative would have been the only thing reviving its corpse? I'm just spitballing here.

Manafort was positioned to become Campaign Manager, but only lasted about 2 months before revelations about his ties with the former Ukrainian government, and his lack of candor, led to his dismissal.

Mmmm "revelations?" "Lack of candor?" I recall a post from David from June of 2016 right around the time of Manafort's hire, basically calling Manafort a criminal for his lobbying work on behalf of the Ukraine et al.

I remember it because it was one of the few times in the last two years that David was correct about something.

Uh oh we got dissension in the ranks one of the monkees is clapping out of sync. At least ray realizes that either Trump is dangerously naive wrt to Manaforts history or, alternatively, made the hire anyways. Either way, not a good look.

I see the Peanut Gallery (#1747) has already taken issue with JE's statement, but Manafort's background was in the delegate selection process, credentials, convention rules, and floor fights. Those who followed this thread, or any news, in Spring 2016, will remember that the fabled Brokered Convention was all that stood in Trump's path after the Florida Primary, making Manafort a potentially useful hire.

Yes, that was the cover story. The problem is that Manafort's "background" in that area was forty years out of date; he had worked on that issue at the 1976 Republican convention. He had apparently done some unspecified work on a couple of other campaigns, but neither of those involved any issues related to floor fights or brokered conventions or the like, and he had spent the vast majority of the intervening decades lobbying for foreign dictators. Given the lack of any recent historical precedent with delegate fights, one might think that 40-year old experience is better than nothing -- but one would bring someone with that minimal usefulness on as a consultant; it would hardly be grounds to make him campaign manager.

To follow up though, pranks (known as hacks) were lionized more than punished; local cops were kept at bay most of the time; and protests were largely ignored by the administration.

Heh...I was there for the "cop car on top of the dome" hack. Was walking to my morning class from Eastgate (married student housing) and my brain was struggling hard to figure out why the heck there were lights atop the dome.

Also there for too many student deaths arising because the administration hadn't yet figured out that 17-19 year-olds being "better at school" did not equate to them "being better at making choices." Fortunate we never had any such issues on our floor (Burton-5) when we were GRTs, but there were enough late nights talking with our students due to events in other residences.... (The freshmen dorms and reduced reliance on independent living units didn't come about until about a decade later.)

10:28 — Trump says “somebody got on television recently” and said Trump “may be the only person that actually fulfilled more promises than he made.”

He was the one who said this on television recently.
...
10:29 — A group of students starts a “lock her up” chant. Trump continues: “Boy, have they committed a lot of atrocities when you look.” He does not say who “they” are.
...
10:45 — Trump touts his record spending on the military. He adds that without a strong military, “You might not be allowed into this room someday. OK? You may not have your houses, your homes.”
...
10:58 — Trump promotes his idea to arm the 10 per cent or 20 per cent of teachers he claims are good with guns. Then he says, confusingly, “I’m not talking about teachers.”
...
11:10 — Trump rails against the MS-13 street gang: “These are animals. They cut people.”

He pantomimes a stabbing. “They cut ‘em. They cut ‘em up in little pieces.”
...
11:15 — Trump lies about the green card lottery process for at least the 11th time in office, as usual falsely claiming foreign leaders are forcing dangerous citizens into the lottery to rid their own countries of problems. (Individuals apply themselves.) “I mean, use your heads,” he urges the crowd.
...
11:17 — Of the man accused of perpetrating the terrorist attack at Manhattan’s West Side Highway in October, Trump says, “They say 22 people came in with him.”

No official other than Trump has said this.
...
11:26 — Trump says the World Trade Organization, created in 1995, “created China.”
...
11:30 — Trump belatedly remembers the policy announcement his advisers promised he would make in this speech — new sanctions on North Korea. “We have imposed the heaviest sanctions ever imposed,” he says, providing no details.

Given the lack of any recent historical precedent with delegate fights, one might think that 40-year old experience is better than nothing -- but one would bring someone with that minimal usefulness on as a consultant; it would hardly be grounds to make him campaign manager.

Manafort wasn't originally hired to be Campaign Manager, but in more of a Convention Manager role, when a contested convention was a distinct possibility. He then filled the vacuum created by Lewandowski's departure, but lasted less than 2 months. Not a great move, but there has yet to be any indication that legal problems stemming from Manafort's business dealings bled into the campaign, or that he has the goods on Trump for any wrongdoing.

Somebody again tell me what’s actually positive in their eyes about Donald Trump. I understand the “trolls the left” aspect, but there are fifty guys blind drunk in sports bars within ten miles of my house right now who would actually be more skillful at trolling me.

Nanette Fabray was a top Broadway star for three years (1949-51), which is a good career length there; made one great film (The Band Wagon, 1953; google triplets band wagon if you’ve never seen that number) and then settled into being famous for being famous for the next 65 years. She was one of the most prominent disabled celebrities (hearing impairment). A very good innings. RIP.

Nanette Fabray was a top Broadway star for three years (1949-51), which is a good career length there; made one great film (The Band Wagon, 1953; google triplets band wagon if you’ve never seen that number) and then settled into being famous for being famous for the next 65 years. She was one of the most prominent disabled celebrities (hearing impairment). A very good innings. RIP.

You missed the highlight of Fabray's career, which was when she was Sid Caesar's co-star in Caesar's Hour, a live comedy show in the mid-late 50's. She took over the Imogene Coca role from a previous series, Your Show of Shows, and didn't miss a beat. It also featured Carl Reiner and Howard Morris at their peaks, and it was a marriage of great talent combined with a perfect format for displaying it.

I've seen many hundreds of comedy skits over the years, but I'd be hard pressed to think of any that beat Gallipacci, "The story of a group of traveling players, and how a clown's heart is broken". Check it out and see if you don't agree. RIP Ms. Fabray.

“Russia is not working according to a master plan carefully laid-out laid out by President Vladimir Putin,” Henry Farrell, of George Washington University, argued last month in Foreign Policy. “Instead, a loose collective of Russians, with incredibly meager resources, have been working together in a disorganized way to probe American democracy for weaknesses. Instead of persuading people to vote for Donald Trump, and against Clinton, they have wanted to create chaos and paranoia—and they have succeeded in stirring confusion only because there were so many weaknesses for them to exploit in the first place.” Similar Russian attempts to sway elections in France and Germany were much less successful, Farrell notes, because they don’t suffer from he calls a “basic failure of democratic knowledge” in America.

The problem is that neither the SRO nor the other 2 Sheriffs Deputies that arrived quickly implemented the rapid deployment protocol. I'm at a loss as to why some here contend that was the appropriate response when the law enforcement professionals seem to unanimously disagree.

Using an iota of common sense in evaluating a scenario is not "lying". You've presented no evidence the technique you're advocating is actually effective. Even in the article you linked they have to admit you need several highly trained men for the plan to have any chance of success, and in this case you're decrying a glorified guidance counselor not charging like he was the offspring of John Rambo and John McClain raised by John Spartan. The best case scenario is probably that he does nothing, and the worst is that he shoots a bunch of kids in the confusion, or just because someone under fire for the first time is unlikely to fire more than half their bullets within a steradian of their target, which'll generate a lot of friendly fire in a crowded, enclosed area.

Trump does project more of a robber-baron than a grey-flannel suit business image, if you like that kind of thing. But not always. In the immigrant-workers-at-Mar-a-Lago flap (which has continued into his presidency), Trump's excuses are the usual corporate BS: all the other corporations do it, SOP in this industry if we want to compete, etc. When it suits him not to buck corporate norms by following his expressed contrarian principles, he reverts to corporate in a hurry.

That's the friendly take on the conversation between the two. That's the problem here for Trump. If he wasn't paying Manafort, then Trump should have understood that Manafort was acting as somebody else's agent. Instead Trump probably thought he was getting a great deal, a 67-year-old intern.

Huh? Manafort accomplished the objective of bringing the RNC leadership to heel.

Yes, that was the cover story. The problem is that Manafort's "background" in that area was forty years out of date; he had worked on that issue at the 1976 Republican convention. He had apparently done some unspecified work on a couple of other campaigns, but neither of those involved any issues related to floor fights or brokered conventions or the like, and he had spent the vast majority of the intervening decades lobbying for foreign dictators. Given the lack of any recent historical precedent with delegate fights, one might think that 40-year old experience is better than nothing -- but one would bring someone with that minimal usefulness on as a consultant; it would hardly be grounds to make him campaign manager.

Manafort was still the best operator the Trump could find and, at that moment, the campaign needed someone with reasonably solid GOP credentials.

And if not Manafort, who among the Team Trump yahoos do you credit with successfully cracking the whip, bringing Priebus, Spicer, and others into line?

Mmmm "revelations?" "Lack of candor?" I recall a post from David from June of 2016 right around the time of Manafort's hire, basically calling Manafort a criminal for his lobbying work on behalf of the Ukraine et al.

I remember it because it was one of the few times in the last two years that David was correct about something.

In any event if David knew it then the Trump campaign should have.

Right, we knew this at the time. And Trump almost certainly knew this too. But in the wake of Lewandowski, someone with experience was needed right away and the pickings were really slim.

Which still curiously ended up being stronger than the language in the DNC. Got an excuse for that reality, Andy?

The motivation behind the DNC's plank was a policy preference that reflects the overall views of the party. The motivation behind the RNC's was a little more suspect than that. From that link in #1787:

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

Still, Republican delegates at last week’s national security committee platform meeting in Cleveland were surprised when the Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.

Inside the meeting, Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas who was a Ted Cruz supporter, proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military.

“Today, the post-Cold War ideal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ is being severely tested by Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Ukraine,” the amendment read. “The Ukrainian people deserve our admiration and support in their struggle.”

Trump staffers in the room, who are not delegates but are there to oversee the process, intervened. By working with pro-Trump delegates, they were able to get the issue tabled while they devised a method to roll back the language.

On the sideline, Denman tried to persuade the Trump staffers not to change the language, but failed. “I was troubled when they put aside my amendment and then watered it down,” Denman told me. “I said, ‘What is your problem with a country that wants to remain free?’ It seems like a simple thing.”

Finally, Trump staffers wrote an amendment to Denman’s amendment that stripped out the platform’s call for “providing lethal defensive weapons” and replaced it with softer language calling for “appropriate assistance.”

That amendment was voted on and passed. When the Republican Party releases its platform Monday, the official Republican party position on arms for Ukraine will be at odds with almost all the party’s national security leaders.

“This is another example of Trump being out of step with GOP leadership and the mainstream in a way that shows he would be dangerous for America and the world,” said Rachel Hoff, another platform committee member who was in the room. ...

Much of the reporting and commentary appears to spring from a single story, published in the Washington Post on July 18, 2016, with the headline "Trump campaign guts GOP's anti-Russia stance on Ukraine." The piece reported that the Trump team "orchestrated a set of events" to change the platform in a pro-Russian direction.

Missing from all the talk is what the Republican platform actually said before it was allegedly "gutted" by Trump. What did the original draft of the platform say about Russia and Ukraine? Was it, in fact, changed? If so, how?

As it turns out, a look at the original draft of the platform — which has never been released publicly — shows that it always had tough language on Russian aggression in Ukraine. And not only did that language stay in the final platform — nothing was taken out — it was actually strengthened, not weakened, as a result of events at the convention.

The controversy is over a chapter in the original platform headlined "America Resurgent." The original draft discussed Russia and Ukraine in two parts of the chapter. The first passage warned of "a resurgent Russia occupying parts of Ukraine and threatening neighbors from the Baltic to the Caucasus."

The second passage was more expansive and began by noting a desire to maintain a friendship with "the people of Russia." But better relations are made more difficult, the draft said, by "the continuing erosion of personal liberty and fundamental rights under the current officials in the Kremlin":

Repressive at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.

That wasn't exactly a pro-Russia or pro-Putin statement. And it stayed in the final Republican platform.

Not only that, the later, final platform contained a few additional words on Russia and Ukraine that weren't in the original draft. To the first passage cited above, after "from the Baltic to the Caucasus," the GOP platform committee added this:

We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning.

Not long after the platform subcommittee meeting, the Post's "Trump campaign guts GOP's anti-Russia stance on Ukraine" story was published, and a new conventional wisdom began to form: The Trump team, doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin, gutted the GOP platform's position on behalf of Russia.

That is precisely the opposite of what happened. In the end, the platform, already fairly strong on the Russia-Ukraine issue, was strengthened, not weakened, as a result of the subcommittee meeting. The Trump campaign agreed to a platform condemning Kremlin belligerence, calling for continued, and perhaps increased, sanctions against Russia, for the full restoration of Ukrainian territory, for refusing to accept "any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine or elsewhere," and pledging to aid Ukraine's armed forces.

We’ve now taken a look at the final version of the Democratic platform and can say, yes, it does mention Ukraine and Russia’s violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty, but not in words as strong or specific as those in the GOP platform (see last week’s editorial). In a paragraph about Russia contained in the section “Confront Global Threats” the Democratic platform simply notes: “Russia is engaging in destabilizing actions along its borders, violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and attempting to recreate spheres of influence that undermine American interests.”

Another reference to Ukraine appears in the entry about Europe under the section titled “A Leader in the World,” where it is stated: “…We will seek to strengthen our strategic partnership with Turkey while pushing for reforms, end the division of Cyprus, and continue to support a close relationship with states that seek to strengthen their ties to NATO and Europe, such as Georgia and Ukraine.”

It should be noted that the platform also expresses the Democratic Party’s position on NATO and its Article 5 commitments, especially in reaction to the most recent statements made by the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. “We reject Donald Trump’s threats to abandon our European and NATO allies, all while he praises Putin. …We will maintain our Article 5 collective security commitments to NATO because we are stronger when we have our allies at our side. …Donald Trump would overturn more than 50 years of American foreign policy by abandoning NATO partners – 44 countries who help us fight terrorism every day – and embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin instead. We believe in strong alliances and will deter Russian aggression, build European resilience and protect our NATO allies. We will make it clear to Putin that we are prepared to cooperate with him when it is in our interest …but we will not hesitate to stand up to Russian aggression. …”

Having reviewed the platforms of both parties, we must ask: But what’s a party’s platform worth if its presidential candidate chooses to not only ignore it, but to voice positions in direct contradiction to it? That’s what’s happening on the Republican side, with Mr. Trump not only questioning the value of NATO and undermining its founding principles (the platform declared that NATO’s “continued effectiveness is vital, especially in light of recent military challenges in Eastern Europe”), but now suggesting that he is open to accepting Russia’s annexation of Crimea (the platform reads, “We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere…”). According to The Washington Post, asked whether he would recognize Crimea “as Russian territory” and lift sanctions, Mr. Trump said: “We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking.”

P.S. York seems to imply that it was the Washington Post itself that made those scathing comments about the RNC plank, when it fact it was two members of the RNC Platform Committee.

P.S. York seems to imply that it was the Washington Post itself that made those scathing comments about the RNC plank, when it fact it was two members of the RNC Platform Committee.

In York's column, he spoke with Ms. Denman:

The first thing to note is that Denman's amendment, had it been added to the platform at the length she proposed it, would have given Ukraine an outsized presence in the platform. Besides, Denman's first paragraph basically repeated points that were already in the platform. So it seems highly unlikely that Denman's amendment would have been added to the platform in its entirety. ...

When Denman proposed her amendment, a Trump national security aide named J.D. Gordon, who was in the room, wanted to edit it. According to Denman, Gordon got on the phone, saying he was calling "New York" to discuss the changes.

The end result was that at the behest of the Trump campaign, the platform committee took out the first paragraph of Denman's amendment altogether. They took out the reference to "lethal defensive weapons" from the second paragraph. But they approved her statement of support for maintaining, and possibly increasing, sanctions against Russia, and, in the place of lethal aid, substituted a pledge to provide "appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine" and to work more closely with NATO. ...

"The platform ended up tougher than it started, compared from the beginning to the end," Denman told me, although she added she still believes her lethal aid provision should have been included in the final document.

Right, the Trump campaign intervened to take out language that would be worse for Russia. (Note that substantively there's a strong argument for not providing "lethal defensive weapons," but it's notable that the campaign intervened here and their motivations are suspect).

Having reviewed the platforms of both parties, we must ask: But what’s a party’s platform worth if its presidential candidate chooses to not only ignore it, but to voice positions in direct contradiction to it? That’s what’s happening on the Republican side, with Mr. Trump not only questioning the value of NATO and undermining its founding principles (the platform declared that NATO’s “continued effectiveness is vital, especially in light of recent military challenges in Eastern Europe”), but now suggesting that he is open to accepting Russia’s annexation of Crimea (the platform reads, “We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere…”). According to The Washington Post, asked whether he would recognize Crimea “as Russian territory” and lift sanctions, Mr. Trump said: “We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking.”

And yet, the Trump administration has green-lighted the sale of light weapons to Ukraine, something the Obama White House categorically refused to do.